


O Caelum Pulchrum

by runobody2



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 06:43:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3165179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runobody2/pseuds/runobody2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The second time, you are tender new grass shoots and she is the weeds burrowing into your roots.  The sun above is a warm steady presence, your world green and gold and stirring.  It comes apart in the drought.  Heat bakes fractures into your forms, and then the molecules that were you and the molecules that were her break away and come together, other plants now where you were before, interchangeable."</p><p>Terezi/Vriska, the AU au.  They're goddesses, or something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Caelum Pulchrum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oxfordRoulette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/gifts).



> First, thanks to oxfordroulette for all of the absolutely delightful prompts- I highly recommend checking them out, they were really good, I hope I've done this justice (does this count as a pun? does mentioning justice in a fic about Terezi automatically make it a joke? who knows?). I picked the religion au- I think I rather wandered off from your intentions a little, oops, but hopefully you enjoy what I've written!
> 
> The title of the fic is from Latin, and- hopefully if I've translated correctly- means O Beautiful Skies.

 

It begins, mostly, when Vriska touches the talisman.Which was rather a bad idea.Anyone could have told her it was a bad idea!But no- Vriska Serket finds the odd glowing sphere in the forest clearing, Vriska Serket touches the odd glowing sphere in the forest clearing.

  
Terezi told her not to do it- sort of.It’s her sort of don’t do it, the sort of don’t do it that’s really do it, I dare you, you’ll do it I know you will.There was something to gain at the time from disaster.The reason has been lost, since.

  
Vriska touches it, and the whole world inverts in sticky dark shades of color lit up too bright and black lines in the borders of things.

  
(Terezi and Vriska come out of this exchange, in material terms, short three eyes, an arm, and with the addition of something that comes through then, settles and sinks its claws in deep, like there are groove marks where it is meant to be, and there are, probably.)

To be fair, it couldn’t have ended any other way, not really.To be less fair, nothing will end another way ever again.

Original Sin, motherfuckers.

* * *

 

_The second time, you are tender new grass shoots and she is the weeds burrowing into your roots.The sun above is a warm steady presence, your world green and gold and stirring.It comes apart in the drought time.Heat bakes fractures into your forms, and then the molecules that were you and the molecules that were her break away and come together, other plants now where you were before, interchangeable._

* * *

 

A row of years passes, mostly uneventful, but their dreams shiftslightly- gilded at the edges, shadows in the corners.Pirate-ships and towering straight-backed arbiters.

* * *

The dreaded imperial terrorismugglers are drones of the Condesce, intended expressly to retrieve any troll that they are set out for quickly and quietly, a dash of tapping steps under the harsh red light of day.

They do not send terrorismugglers for Vriska Serket.Instead, they unleash several pounds of highly explosive explosives upon her home.Her lusus is, of course, trapped in the rock cliffs and killed entirely.  The rock crumbles and her famed luck fails her.She falls, fifty feet of empty air beneath her, nothing there to break her fall but the ground, nobody there to catch her, nobody there for her to make catch her.  A light flares, and she catches herself, in a small nest of golden spiderwebbing caught on the ground.

Perhaps somebody comments "Interesting," over the com, and very officially robed figures takes her ragged unconscious form.It is, all in all, fittingly showy.The House of Fading Light has a reputation to keep.

(Her dreams are of sunrise shores, water clear and dark and brine filled.Glowing starfish with saltwater blood, littered among golden coins.There's someone looming over her too, and perhaps there always has been)

* * *

When Terezi first hears from Equius that Vriska’s hive was judiciously blown sky high, she is not concerned in the least.

She _does_ wonder who did it, and conclude that there is truly a very large number of trolls that would have a motive.The number of trolls with also a means and an opportunity dwindles the count somewhat, but she supposes that it was rather inevitable that something like this would happen eventually; to Vriska, clever but hardly ever smart, easy to love and easier still to (platonically) despise.

She doesn’t remotely consider that Vriska might have been, say, hurt by the explosion, dead, severely harmed, etc. etc.She does consider missing, but only in the sense of “hiding with tail between legs, to return later with at least eighty-eight stories of bravado and how she made her daring and probably unnecessary revenge.”

It takes a fortnight, for her to really start to worry.

At some point- multiple points, actually,-she sleeps.A change comes over her, and the golden figures in her dreams are back in full force.In the inky licorice darkness blurring against the cherry red sky, she makes out the figure of a huge set of scales, looming.

When she wakes, she leaves behind her hive in the trees and the unhatched egg in the clearing just beyond, and sets out for the House of the Rising Sun, just another fortune seeker.

They tell her what she need to know.

* * *

 

_You meet again, in the Rainy Cities.When you are young, you jump in the puddles together in the park, and the sky is unending gray for miles and miles, but tarps and umbrellas and at night lanterns in bright colors hover overhead._

 

_You catch her glancing at dragonfruit from the southern isles, many pence too expensive to think about buying in the street market, and you steal two, one for her and one for you.You tell her that it some woman with a big bag had dropped them and that they were fair game, and she considers your suspicious acquisition but takes a bite anyways.Sweet juice drips town her chin as she laughs, and you consider stealing something else, maybe- something like a kiss._

 

_It doesn’t end well, but then, nothing does._

* * *

 

They show Vriska the golden thread she wove, remind her of the Gamblignant, from the old myths, patron of luck and daring escapades and shipwrecks, and they tell her that when she touched a talisman at three sweeps, a bit of that spirit had lodged right around her heart.They tell her that really, she was always meant to touch the talisman and become the host of the Gamblingant’s spirit, (although it didn’t happen quite until then!) and that really this was a stunning display of paradox causality.

They tell her that she commands those powers now, that she is twice-born a goddess, that she is a bright golden bead in the necklace of the universe.

They also tell her that she cannot in fact, leave, -no, she can’t force her way out with her newfound powers - yes, they are very experienced cultists who have been at this for a while (a couple millennia in fact!) - no, she can’t order them to do anything.

She swears revenge!She’ll stay, she says.She’ll stay and she’ll learn all of their dirty secrets and how to control her powers and one day she’ll be at their backs with a rustiest old knife she can get her hands on and she’ll make sure they life long enough to regret everything they’ve done to her.

Okay, they say.If you’re able to do that, my dear, we’ve outlived our purpose.One of them smiles.It’s rather unsettling.

* * *

 

And, eventually, they do outlive their purpose.She slits their throats with a blunt dagger like she promised, until her hands are all covered with muddy shades.Blood doesn’t mix well, it seems.

She messes up killing the Head Cultist, and don’t get the secrets she wanted because he bled out too soon and too fast and as his eyes roll back in his head she realizes abruptly that she has been yelling at a corpse.She drops the knife then, and runs out.

It doesn’t matter, in the end, because after wandering through the empty halls for half an hour,she find herself at the door of the archives she were never allowed in unsupervised.They tell her anything she’d want to know, anyways.

* * *

 

_The Gamblingant, foremost of Gods of Daring and Bravado, and patrons of those on the murkier side of the law, thieves with quicksilver hearts and mighty laughs._

_Often locked in battle with the Arbiter._

_Like all the other gods, parts of her eternal spirit occasionally become imbued in mortals, who then transcend their forms, forced to relive parts of her legend._

* * *

 

It’s two sweeps until they meet again.

It is your last quest, Terezi, they told her.To wander by a certain seaside village.You’ll know when you finds it.

There’s still a little jolt when she rounds the corner and finds Vriska.

“I guess, then,” Vriska says, and she sounds so very tired.“I have to kill you now.Just like all the legends.”

Terezi’s heart hurts a little, but she smiles her brightest.“I’ll get you first.”

* * *

 

_You make it a point to go to every party Vriska might be at, and she makes it a point to show up at all of yours.It’s long past time when you could be considered either acquaintances or friends, but nobody forgets easily in these glittering dining halls, and least of all you two._

_Tonight you’re on the ballroom floor with one fetching Dave Strider fresh from America, and there you see on Vriska’s arm that John Egbert fellow from who-knows-where that she’s been bringing about._

_Dave dips you and his tie is a delicious shade of red but you’ve been here long enough to follow the rules of the game and your eyes never stop tracking Vriska, once._

* * *

 

Vriska’s eyes open at on the fringe of the universe, wide and blank.Through her hand she can see her blood pulse in waves of gold, incorporeal.

Terezi’s already there, floating among the clouds of interstellar dust and nebulae, kicking her feet like a wriggler on a set of swings.

“What now?” Vriska asks.  

“Say, Vriska.What do you feel about eternity?”

“That it better fear my name, because i’m gonna be the first thing on it’s mind for longer than it can think.”Terezi’s still there, kicking.Perhaps that didn’t have the right ring.  

“I think-,” Vriska begin again.

“You might regret it,” she says.“I could try to kill you, here.I was always meant to.I could try.”Vriska stares at Terezi's fingers, spread long and thin, wonders if they could touch hers, despite the all-around transparence.

“Forget it, Pyrope,” Vriska say.“Nice try trying to get rid of me.”  She closes her eyes.

* * *

 

_It’s a couple dozen lives later, and you’ve killed her mother._

_It’s very rare, really, that she has a mother for you to kill.But she did, this time.You wonder why you did it.You don’t know, really.What purpose would it serve?Confusing her?Inciting her to an emotion-filled act of foolishness?_

_None of what past Vriska did explains much to current Vriska._

_She's there, perched on the edge of the roof.How long has she been up here in the night?You know she stands heat much better than cold.You must have asked her about it once, probably, but you can’t remember what she said, if she said anything.It was probably something stupid, like “JUST1C3 BURNS HOTT3R TH4N ANY SUN.”_

_(You’ll mention again, a couple lives later, and she’ll tell you: “F1R3 CANNOT K1LL A DR4GON.”The memes were truly spectacular, that time around.)_

_It starts drizzling.She doesn't seem to care at all._

_"Hey," you say."Hey, hey."_

_She scoffs."You've said that three times!Are you going to try for eight?I hate to say it, but I think this joke was old two minutes ago.I wouldn’t have this much time to spare for a friend."_

_"Unfair!" you say."I never gave up my friendship card.I thought you were all for, like, giving people their dues and that schtick.Shouldn't you know this?Man, shortchanging me?I didn't take you for the corrupt type."_

_"Ironic, that you're telling me about justice."_

_"Man!you're really stupid sometimes!"You sit down, next to her.She doesn't move._

_There is a lightness to her being, even still.You put your hand on her back.She doesn't move a hair, doesn't speak a word."I'm sorry, I guess."_

_She mumbles something that might have been go away, leave, might have had bite.She is still unmoving.It seems odd to you.Then she laughs, hysterical almost."Ugh."_

_"Did you say something?Because I sure didn’t hear you."_

_"I said that you're the worst person I've ever met, your face stinks, and also you stink."There’s still no bite behind it.She sounds amused, almost, fond._

_"Wow, low blow.And i thought we were having a moment."You wonder what it would feel like, if you reached out and took her hand._

* * *

 

_Her hand feels cold and tapered and too bony, just like it always had been.Above the steel and glass, the sun begins to rise._

* * *

_She stabs you, the next day._

* * *

(It’s alright.  They’ll see each other again in the morning.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's a wrap! Hopefully you enjoyed. :)
> 
> I realize that all of this mythos and pov switching may be rather confusing, feel free to drop a comment and ask what I meant if so inclined, or come talk to me at [tumblr redacted for anonymous reasons].
> 
> I wish I could have spent more time on this, because it was really fun to write- I procrastinated for a while and also was suddenly and extremely busy, but oh well. I'll probably come back and edit or something once life clears up (and fix the above mentioned clarity errors and probably faulty narration changes that are somewhere in there, I'm sure of it.)


End file.
